Speaker
Description
The intensifying impacts of climate change have underscored the need for effective governance and long-term planning to ensure heat resilience in urban environments. Greater Sydney, with its exposure to extreme heat events, presents a compelling case study in the challenges and opportunities of integrating heat resilience into urban planning. Heatwaves have long been under-recognised in planning legislation, with a fragmented approach across Greater Sydney’s thirty-three Local Government Areas, often leaving heat management to ad-hoc responses rather than systematic, long-term planning (WSROC 2022).
This paper explores the role of the Greater Sydney Heat Taskforce, a multistakeholder alliance, in advocating for legislative responses to embed heat resilience into urban planning policies and frameworks (2023). Heat resilience refers to the ability of urban environments to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of extreme heat, ensuring the protection of public health, infrastructure, and vulnerable communities. This includes measures like urban cooling strategies, green spaces, and building designs that reduce heat exposure. Using evolutionary governance theory, this research examines how governance structures and planning systems evolve—or fail to evolve—in response to climate risks such as heat. Evolutionary governance theory highlights the dynamic, non-linear interactions between institutions, actors, and policy, and the role of path dependencies in shaping governance adaptations (Birchall et al., 2021).
The paper argues that the efforts of the Greater Sydney Heat Taskforce have been crucial in bringing heat resilience to the forefront of urban planning discussions, specifically in advocating for stronger legislative frameworks. Despite the importance of addressing heat resilience, there are significant barriers to embedding this issue within planning legislation, such as conflicting economic priorities and political inertia. Developers, for instance, often resist the implementation of stronger planning controls, while political and economic pressures limit the development of robust statutory frameworks.
Achieving meaningful and lasting progress requires embedding heat resilience within statutory planning controls, ensuring that governance mechanisms are institutionalised and sustainable over the long term. This paper underscores the importance of critical junctures—moments when political, economic, or social conditions create opportunities for significant governance change. These junctures can align stakeholder interests, overcome resistance, and push forward stronger legislative frameworks for long-term urban planning. However, entrenched interests and path dependencies often hinder the implementation of enduring change. The lessons from Greater Sydney’s experience offer valuable insights for other jurisdictions aiming to integrate climate resilience into urban planning legislation.
References
Birchall S, MacDonald S and Slater T (2021) Anticipatory planning: Finding balance in climate change
adaptation governance. Urban Climate 37: 100859
Wester Sydney Regional Organisations of Councils (WSROC) (2022) Heat Smart Resilience Framework –
Final Draft. Available at: https://wsroc.com.au/downloads/download/3-reports/310-heat-smart-resilience
framework-final-draft
WSROC (2023) Greater Sydney Heat Taskforce. Available at https://wsroc.com.au/projects/project-turn
down-the-heat/greater-sydney-heat-taskforce
| Keywords | Heat resilience; Urban planning; Climate adaptation; Governance; Planning legislation |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
